FIFA Club World Cup. Auckland City vs Al Ittihad
The entire Auckland City squad is worth a fifth of a Fabinho.
The Fifa Club World Cup happens every year. The winners of the seven global confederations face off against each other in a battle for the title of the best club in the world. Heavyweights Manchester City will be there representing Europe and this year sees a matchup of two teams that are worlds apart. Auckland City FC of New Zealand vs Al-Ittihad of Saudi Arabia.
Auckland City FC are a small but super successful football club. They attract the top amateur talent in New Zealand and regularly win the national league. This is not a professional league. The players may receive financial incentives from team sponsors, but they do not get paid to play.
It’s a bit of a grey area but the ACFC players apparently have regular day jobs. The club maintain that all of their players are amateur although some of them have paid coaching roles at the club. Some have been on the fringes of national selection, some have played professionally overseas but in reality, if they were good enough, they would be in the A League, the USA or plying their trade professionally in Europe.
Their opponents, Al Ittihad FC, have been spending huge amounts on players to compete in the Saudi Pro League. They enticed some of the biggest names in Europe with gigantic salaries. The Saudi Arabian side has an array of superstars including Balon d’Or winner Karim Benzema on a deal worth 180 million NZ$ per season. By comparison Auckland City’s entire income for 2021 was 852 thousand NZ$.
Al Ittihad also have French World Cup winning midfielder N’Golo Kante and former Liverpool star Fabinho. They recently had a 400 million NZ$ offer for Liverpool’s Mo Salah turned down. The top four Saudi clubs have been throwing vast amounts of money at high profile players around the world to boost the profile of their league and challenge the financial dominance of the English Premier League.
Transfermarkt reports the Auckland City squad is worth 9.2 million NZ$ which I think may be slightly overvalued. Al Ittihad FC’s squad is apparently worth 237 million NZ$. I really don’t know how they come up with these figures, but you get the idea. The entire Auckland City squad is worth a fifth of a Fabinho.
Auckland City have a lovely little ground in the quiet suburb of Sandringham, with a small stand that might fit a couple of hundred fans. It’s a great surface and a nice place to play, but not flash by any means. I should know, they even let me play there a few times, that’s how amateur they are. Auckland City won the Northern Region title again in 2023 which did not get much attention as it was a foregone conclusion. But they did get worldwide headlines for what may be the only disabled streaker ever recorded at a sporting event.
The game, on December 12th will be played at the 62 thousand capacity King Abdullah Sports City in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Al Ittihad’s home ground. I wouldn’t advise any streaking at this venue.
The Saudi Pro league has bought its way into prominence with the Saudi government’s money. The government public investment fund (PIF) owns the four top teams in Saudi as well as Newcastle United in England.
Sportswashing is a relatively new term but has been practised for decades. The 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Nazi Germany, was an early case. FIFA, no strangers to a bit of bribery, money laundering and corruption, are happy let their sport be used as a form of propaganda. In this case the Saudi government uses sport to direct attention away from human rights abuses, state-sponsored criminal acts, oppression, corruption and the brutality of their totalitarian regime.
Last year Saudi Arabia executed 81 men in 24 hours for charges ranging from terrorism to holding deviant beliefs. Their human rights records have been under increasing scrutiny since the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, apparently by government agents.
Every year more than 1,000 women try to flee Saudi Arabia. Saudi activist Wajeha al-Huwaider compares male guardianship to slavery: "It's the same kind of feeling they have for handicapped people or for animals. The kindness comes from pity, from lack of respect. The ownership of a woman is passed from one man to another. The woman is merely a piece of merchandise.”
It's even worse for LGBTQ people. Homosexuality, transgender status or gender non-conformity are seen as immoral and indecent. The law punishes acts of homosexuality with capital punishment, life imprisonment, fines, deportation and flogging. Chemical castration has been used, beatings and torture have been applied during investigation and detentions.
Saudi’s high profile sporting events, the football, golf and formula one, have to be reported on. Cristiano Ronaldo plays for Al Nassr, and his every move is studied forensically. All of this attention on the sport does not mean there is any less attention on the other despicable stuff going on. But now, when people think of Saudi Arabia, they might think of Cristiano sulking after a bad tackle instead of how many undesirables were executed that day.
Ex Liverpool captain and England international Jordan Henderson, currently on huge wages at Al-Ettifaq FC, was rightly condemned for taking the Saudi money after publicly supporting LGBTQ rights. While at the same time few question Britain when it exports billions of pounds in weapons to Saudi Arabia and receives billions of pounds in foreign investment in return.
This is how sportswashing works. Criticism of Jordan fills the headlines when there are much worse things happening. These distractions from the brutal facts about the regime are working for Saudi Arabia and even all the discussion and public damnation of sportswashing is playing into their hands.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman knows all this and blatantly doesn’t care. “If sportswashing is going to increase my GDP by 1%, then we will continue doing sportswashing,” he said recently in an interview with Fox News.
The Saudi pro league is in its infancy but has already had a huge impact on the European leagues. The top professionals already earn millions but the money they are offering players would be hard to turn down. Enough to swallow your ethics, forget your morals and ensure you are wealthy enough for you and your family to live in luxury for the rest of your life.
Auckland City players have no such security. When they retire from football, they will need to have a trade to rely on and work to retirement. But there will be scouts watching the Club World Cup and a good showing at may attract a trial or a contract at a professional club, a big incentive especially for the younger players. The club has history at this event. They finished an amazing third in 2014.
They were massive underdogs then and they will be again in December. I would love it if they managed to beat Al Ittihad. It’s unlikely but crazy things can happen in football especially in these one-off, nothing-to-lose type of games. I will be watching and cheering on Auckland City. Sportswashing in action.